Reliability and effectiveness of integrated alternative water resources management for regional climate change adaptation

RECREATE aims to improve the resilience of water supplies and protect the status of natural water resources by facilitating the assessment and inclusion of Alternative Water Resources (AWR) in water management planning for water scarce regions, and to increase awareness and acceptance of and trust in the fundamental role of AWR in climate change adaptation.

RECREATE will produce an open access repository compiling knowledge and data on the cost-efficiency, environmental and health impact of different technological and water management alternatives.

This repository will be encoded as an independent module into a Digital Decision Support Framework (RECREATE_WT) that, together with 3 additional modules covering climate change impact predictions, adaptation strategies to local context and a decision matrix will be used for co-creating adaptative pathways for water management.

RECREATE_WT will compile and assess information on water availability and demand for a given region and organise knowledge on the performance of innovative treatment technologies.

It will explicitly consider human health risks associated to potable use, local context (regulatory, cultural, spatial and socio-economical aspects) and water management strategies under different stress scenarios.

The tool will provide a decision matrix for pathways creation,thus RECREATE_WT will act as a knowledge orchestrator and a decision theatre environment for co-designing water resource planning pathways RECREATE_WT will be demonstrated in 4 regional case studies (CS) covering different bio-regions (Mediterranean, Continental and Atlantic), and water contexts.

CS will focus on the digitalization of the water cycle for integrated water management while demonstrating the cost-effectiveness reliability and safety of the use of new AWR.

Full-scale or already available pilots from previous or already on-going projects will be used for RECREATE, optimizing the efforts and maximizing the impact reached.